totte, off
which it is found in great numbers.[2] In fact, two centuries later
Abouzeyd, an Arab, who wrote an account of the trade and productions of
India, speaks of these shells by the name they still bear, which he
states to be _schenek_[3]; but "schenek" is not an Arabic word, and is
merely an attempt to spell the local term, _chank_, in Arabic
characters.

[Footnote 1: COSMAS INDICO-PLEUSTES, in Thevenot's ed. t i. p. 21.]

[Footnote 2: At Kottiar, near Trincomalie, I was struck with the
prodigious size of the edible oysters, which were brought to us at the
rest-house. The shell of one of these measured a little more than eleven
inches in length, by half as many broad: thus unexpectedly attesting the
correctness of one of the stories related by the historians of
Alexander's expedition, that in India they had found oysters a foot
long. PLINY says: "In Indico mari Alexandri rerum auctores pedalia
inveniri prodidere."--_Nat. Hist._ lib. xxxii. ch. 31. DARWIN says, that
amongst the fossils of Patagonia, he found "a massive gigantic oyster,
sometimes even a foot in diameter."--_Nat. Voy._, ch. viii.]

[Footnote 3:--ABOUZEYD, _Voyages Arabes,_ &c., t. i. p. 6; REINAUD,
_Memoire sur l'Inde,_ &c p. 222.]

BERTOLACCI mentions a curious local peculiarity[1] observed by the
fishermen in the natural history of the chank. "All shells," he says,
"found to the northward of a line drawn from a point about midway from
Manaar to the opposite coast (of India) are of the kind called _patty_,
and are distinguished by a short flat head; and all those found to the
southward of that line are of the kind called _pajel_, and are known
from having a longer and more pointed head than the former. Nor is there
ever an instance of deviation from this singular law of nature. The
_Wallampory_, or 'right-hand chanks,' are found of both kinds."

[Footnote 1: See also the _Asiatic Journal for_ 1827, p. 469.]

This tendency of particular localities to re-produce certain
specialities of form and colour is not confined to the sea or to the
instance of the chank shell. In the gardens which line the suburbs of
Galle in the direction of Matura the stems of the coco-nut and jak trees
are profusely covered with the shells of the beautiful striped _Helix
hamastoma_. Stopping frequently to collect them, I was led to observe
that each separate garden seemed to possess a variety almost peculiar to
itself; in one the mouth of every individual shell was _re